my budding chef

I've been wanting to have a play kitchen for Anna for quite a while. She loves to use her little pans and dishes and food to pretend to cook and I love seeing her put some "stew" in the "oven." And though I love encouraging her imagination, I just ached to give her a little something more than the top of a rubbermaid tub for a stove and her little couch for an oven.

A cute new one like this was out of our price range

from Pottery Barn

And even if we got one of the free ones like this that's always popping up on freecycle, where would we put it?

from here

For that matter, even if I got up the gumption to make one like this...

see more hand made beauties inspired by Ana White's genius here

...or even as simple as this, space would always be a concern.

I fell in love when I saw this in Parent's Magazine. See more great ideas here

And that's when a shallow, wide box from soap.com arrived at my door. At first I just put it in our recycle pile, but every time I passed it, it called to me and by dinner time I was convinced. I gathered materials after dinner, and once the kids were in bed, I went at it. Here's the finished product.



I love that I already had everything I used, so not only did it not cost me a cent, but it also used up some junk lying around. And, it fits perfectly on top of that rubbermaid tub that had been the previous stove. Best of all, Anna loves it.

She can wash her pans...

...pick her produce

...taste her soup

...and, of course, dump things out into it!

When she's done, it looks a little something like this...

...which makes Anna one very happy little girl!

P.S. I'm pretty sure it also inspired this, her first recipe.